The Tomorrow Man

source: The Tomorrow Man

The acting was well done; happy to see older actors getting roles, the story was pleasant. And then the end came...WTF are you kidding me?!

I love John Lithgow - no other actor can portray confusion quite like he does - but I was doing my best John Lithgow impersonation while watching The Tomorrow Man - odd - to say the least There is a nice little reference to the Twilight Zone which I found quite amusing - and if you are a fan of Lithgows & Twilight Zone - you will recall his brilliant performance in Nightmare at 20,000 Feet Other than that - for 95 minutes of awkward weirdness you can knock your self out with this forgettable piece of garbage - and there is alot of that in this movie Footnote - I found this reviewers comments as strange as the movie CONTENT ADVISORY: Occasional conversational foul language, occasional cigarette smoking by a secondary character, Ed offering Ronnie alcohol & other beverages when she first comes to his house & she chooses to have water, champagne with the family Thanksgiving meal, a heated argument with yelling during the meal followed by the granddaughter running away from the neighborhood, one incident of Ed low speed wreckless driving, heavy kissing with strong insinuation of intercourse & Ed waking up the following morning at Ronnie's house. Dude - you need to get more LOL - this is the most harmless and tame movie EVER !!!! btw

This movie is horrible! So depressing and lackluster. There is no chemistry between the two leads. Absolutely NONE. The movie never goes anywhere. You keep waiting for it to go somewhere...and then you feel so disappointed. I don't care that this about two seniors. That doesn't bother me. If the writing is good...that's all that matters. I laughed all the way through Grumpy Old Men parts one and two! But that's because the characters in those movies actually seemed like REAL PEOPLE. Not pathetic cliché's of what someone thinks old people act like. Why does the character of Ronnie have ZERO PERSONALITY? What is wrong with her voice? Why is it so weak and croaky sounding? I'm sorry, but she seems like a total wash-out. She has no interests or hobbies or opinions or charm or ANYTHING! (And her fashion sense is atrocious)...like an old lady from sixty years ago, maybe. There is no plot. No chemistry. No good character development. Very little humor, once you get past the beginning. No suspense. And why is John Lithgow's cliché of a family tossed in like that? It's such bad writing, that it's cringe-worthy. I'm sorry. I really wanted to like this movie. I think there should be movies about people of all ages in our society, I really do! But why do the movies about older people have to fall so flat....like day-old soda? What makes John Lithgow's character think there is going to be an apocalypse, anyway? That is never even explored! And wouldn't Ronnie want to know WHY he thinks the world is about to come to an end? Why doesn't she ask the normal questions a person would ask?

It made me laugh. It made me cry. I didn't want it to end... what more can you ask of a movie? Enough said.

"The Tomorrow Man" brings the story of Ed and Ronnie. As the movie opens, we get to know Ed, as we seem him in his home, alone, talking to his grown-up son on the phone (more like giving a monologue to his son), watching the news, and visiting conspiracy chat rooms. Then one day at the grocery store, he notices a nicely older lady, and before we know it, he is asking her out for a cup of coffee... At this point we are 10 min. into the movie but to tell you more of the plot would spoil your viewing experience , you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out. Couple of comments: this is the feature-length debut of writer-director-photographer Noble Jones. Here Jones brings a romance between 2 people "on the wrong side of 60", according to Ed ("There is no wrong side of 60!", reacts Ronnie). But more importantly these two couldn't be more different from each other: he is a guy who always worries about tomorrow, and hence cannot live in the moment. She on the other hand doesn't worry too much about anything. Potentially good premise, and then what? The... pretty much nothing, as it turns out. By the time we hit the hour mark, it feels like the movie should about end, and in a desperate movie, Nobles add an entire side story about Ed's son Brian and his family, which eventually goes poof! Thankfully we have two veteran performers in the lead role who seem to relish this and do the best they can with the material they are given. Kudos to Blythe Danner and John Lithgow (whom we just recently saw in "Late Night", albeit that was a much smaller role). "The Tomorrow Man" premiered at this year's Sundance film festival to ho-hum reaction. It opened this weekend at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati. The Sunday matinee performance where I saw this at was attended ok but not great (exactly 10 people, including myself), and mostly seniors I might add. Most of them seemed to thoroughly enjoy the film, laughing loudly on a number of times. If you are a fan of John Lithgow or Blythe Danner, I encourage you to see this out, be it in the theater, on VOD, or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray, and draw your own conclusion.

Perhaps I shouldn't review The Tomorrow Man as I only watched the first 30 minutes or so then turned it off. I'd decided to watch it because of the two leads, and also because being in that age range myself, I thought, great - a romance about 'older' people. Why I couldn't get into it, well, I was really turned off by Ronnie, Blythe Danner's character. She seemed as if she were either on sedating drugs, or was suffering from a vegetative depression, or had had a stroke, or was just plain dumb. Yes, she had ongoing sadness about the death of her daughter years before, but knowing this didn't make watching her more enjoyable for me. Perhaps she perked up as the movie went on... If she did, I can't help but wonder whether the low, dreary quality of her voice lifted. Ed, John Lithgow's character, was the driving force in the relationship, at least initially. Being quite assertive, he bust through Ronnie's stupor and got her interested. Ed is supposed to be quirky, preparing for Doomsday in contrast to Ronnie's being into things, and the here and now. Another thing that turned me off was that I had hoped to relate to them as being in the same generation. None (that I saw) of the usual features of the 'Baby Boom' generation were there, at least in the first thirty minutes. Perhaps this was intentional on the part of the writer, not wanting to fall into stereotypes. For me, though, it put them in a sort of generational vacuum, which I found disconcerting and distancing. John Lithgow did an adequate acting job as usual, but this film was not Blythe Danner's finest moment. Or maybe it was and I just couldn't get into the character she played. Either way, it was money down the drain for me.

The characters are in my age bracket, which is why I went to see it in the first place. I compare it to THE LEISURE SEEKER, another film that casts problems of aging in a false light. The main thing Ed and Ronnie have in common is hoarding disorder. Ed's disorder is overlain with obsessive-compulsive neatness. Pursuing it causes him to neglect essential medications. (From the vintage of his son's Prius, we know Ed lives in the day of Medicare, Part D. Is he really under 65 and not yet on Medicare?) He takes admirable therapeutic steps to get past the hoarding. She stays stuck in it. My point is that hoarding disorder is not particularly an old age malady. Too bad to conflate the two.

The movie starts with some scenes showing us the boring life of an old man. Ed (John Lithgow) is one of those old men in his wrong side of his 60s as he claims it who are proud of themselves for knowing how to use the technology & internet. He lives alone & he watches tv news everyday for a particular reason which we'll understand later in the movie. In the intro we see Ed talking on the phone with his son Brian (Derek Cecil) & complaining to him about how he always wastes his time & that he should be prepared for the unknown future. As the story goes on he starts to like an old lady. He finds a way to make her notice him & he's as clingy as a teenager in his way. Ronnie (Blythe Danner) had a hard time in which she had lost her young daughter because of a rare disease & also her husband died of a cancer. They start liking & trusting each other & they both have a secret which later they reveal those to each other. Ed is a man in control of everything & he knows what to do next but as the relationship progresses, he begins to feel the vicissitudes. Noble Jones did an impeccable job in writing & the screenplay seems so interesting. I highly recommend this movie if you wanna see a peaceful movie.

I saw this at Sundance 2019. Cute movie. Entertaining. One of the best final 30 seconds of a movie you'll ever.